The Best Pop Albums of 2022

To be a pop artist in 2022 is to be an influencer. There are the obvious giants in the scene who seemingly absorb the entire timeline the second they drop new music and cause ticket websites to crash entirely when their concerts go on sale. As we’ve learned over the past few years, however, the definition of pop music is evolving and can also take indie darlings and bring them huge, new devoted audiences once their music becomes trending TikTok fodder. At the end of the day, it’s popular music, and these were the best albums it had to offer in 2022…

The 1975 – Being Funny In A Foreign Language [Dirty Hit]

At just under 45 minutes, the 1975 refrains from bloating an album with songs which capture every current content trend in the moment, and instead refine their songwriting narrative to a modern spin on contemporary indie folk and the late ‘80s / early ‘90s pastiche which they’ve absorbed excellently into their own neon light. Matty Healy still remains the endearingly insufferable lyrical prophet of these times, working in references to boners, ejaculation, and being cancelled into earnest love songs, be it in his reality or daydreams. A less tryhard form of sincerity works just as well in their favor.

Bad Bunny – Un Verano Sin Ti [RIMAS]

Like its predecessors in 2020′s one-two punch in the acclaimed YHLQMDLG and its punk-exploring counterpart EL ÚLTIMO TOUR DE MUNDO, Un Verano Sin Ti is packed at 23 tracks, but to date, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio has yet to falter at ensuring his albums are all substance and little to no filler through his futuristic lens and global genre-hopping, in this instance curated for warm weather play (and hopefully hotter play in the bedroom after grinding through those cold, lonely nights…)

Beabadoobee – Beatopia [Dirty Hit]

Swirling in bittersweet sugar and crystalline highs, beabadoobee comes into her own with her sophomore album Beatopia, contemplating the trials and tribulations of adulting and longing for relationships from the inside of them through a glossier daydream than that of her 2020 debut, Fake It Flowers, with touches of Matrix-esque pop-rock and cloudscaped indie-pop for the cannibas therapy crowd.

Beyoncé – RENAISSANCE [Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia Records]

Moving past the personal and flawless execution of her acclaimed, poptimism peak one-two punch of 2013′s Beyoncé and 2016′s Lemonade, RENAISSANCE moves fully into art, quite literally at that in a celebration of Black dance music spanning across the last several decades that have permeated the culture at large, making that house (and club, and disco scene) Bey’s own dance floor with an album that flows like a mixtape meant to elicit movement, empowerment, escapism, and sex at their highest potential potency.

Charli XCX – CRASH [Atlantic Records]

CRASH is Charli XCX’s swan song as the last album released on her Atlantic Records contract, so it’s fitting that the Internet pop superstar has come full circle with trying to appease both commercial and more nuanced creative degrees with an album from a place of learned experiences in the art of balancing both worlds, making it her most concentrated body yet to sound like both the future and present in the same breath for maximum exposure.

FKA twigs – CAPRISONGS [Young]

CAPRISONGS is FKA Twigs in her most tangible creative element, but even so, she’s still eons ahead of the rest of the world even when she’s freewheeling into cosmic fun. From mega-powered R&B pop to its Afrobeat dance swerves and the symphonic art pop melding it all in-between, this mixtape is a reset from the serious-as-fuck fuck jams and heartache we’re familiar with, and hears the evocative alt-pop star branching her sound out into the universe effortlessly with that same energy without all of the drama.

Mitski – Laurel Hell [Dead Oceans]

The world Mitski reenters the frame into with Laurel Hell is a very different one than where she last left us with the indie pop grandeur that was her acclaimed third album in 2019′s Be the Cowboy, with her audience now being absorbed into TikTok culture and the mythology behind her artistry growing with it. Nevertheless, Mitski has made Laurel Hell an understated statement for a reason, with it being a more patient listen that holds on quieter moments longer in order for its vivid realizations in full color as well as its emotional connect to be heard only by those who continue to listen even if she were to fall off the face of the Earth again.

ROSALÍA – MOTOMAMI [Columbia Records]

ROSALÍA has tirelessly work in collaboration with culture shaping forces like the Weeknd, Bad Bunny, and Cardi B to make her metamorphosing style of global art-pop into music that translates beyond hipster cred status and into the common pop culture conscious since her sophomore breakout in 2019′s El Mal Querer, and with MOTOMAMI, the Spanish superstar gets there by rewriting every genre language as her own, tapping into what has come to define her work in atypical, oft morbid, oft horny songwriting meticulously produced with a consumer-friendly edge in its presentation that is incomparable to everything else on the landscape.

Sudan Archives – Natural Brown Prom Queen [Stones Throw]

Sudan Archives’ Brittney Park is in a class all her own on Natural Brown Prom Queen, bending her violin in ways previously unheard through an uncanny composition of R&B, rap, electronic and pop futurism framing her story as an Black woman and L.A. transplant within memory and future desires. The ambition is palpable, and so is her inner energy projected out, coming into her own authentically with one of the year’s most truly singular visions.

Taylor Swift – Midnights [Republic Records]

Following the pandemic album detour into the indie woods of folklore and evermore, Midnights is a late night pop vibe shift where Taylor Swift’s sprawling thoughts on the things that keep her mind racing at night command both deeper introspection into her self-mythology as a well as TikTok-worthy trend where even befuddling references to “sexy babies” lead down rabbit of holes of deeper significance, further expanding her musical multi-universe by yet another layer.

The Weeknd – Dawn FM [Republic Records]

Seamless in its play of cocaine-crusted Moroder disco gleam, sci-fi synth projections on the existential of life and celebrity, and the radio jockey character narrations by Abel Tesfaye’s L.A. neighbor, Jim Carey, Dawn FM has found a way to creak into the light of the Weeknd’s craft without being blinded by overloaded expectations, furthering a cohesiveness in his twilight dance-pop hallucinations in what amounts to his best album as a complete cosmic body.